All Along
by XScout
Summary: Mulder doubts his perceived bond with his partner after she tells him a shocking revelation that could tear them apart. Tag to Gethsemane


Summary: Mulder doubts his perceived bond with his partner after she tells him a shocking revelation that could tear them apart. Tag to Gethsemane

Disclaimer: The X-Files belong to Chris Carter and 10-13 Productions, no infringement intended. The is loosely based on the song 'My Immortal" by Evanescence but it is not a songfic.

Author's Notes: Originally written in 2003.

* * *

ALL ALONG

I thought you were with me.

All this time I believed I had you here, by my side all along.

I want to believe.

I'm so tired of being here, in this darkness born of guilt and pain. My childish fears have kept me here, reigning me back whenever I had a glimmer of hope, a real chance for happiness. It seems my eternal fate is to wallow in soul-drenching condemnation. You were my only light, the tiny red spark that could have been fanned to a flame if allowed to.

I didn't have enough breath to keep the spark alight. It might have been easier if you had just left. Left me to my quest for the truth, a single man against the machinations of a monster I do not know how to fight. At least you would have been safe, somewhere in a life without fear, without lies, without pain, and without death.

It would have been useless though. After having warmed myself by your side I would never be able to forget that radiance. Your presence lingers here, taunting me with the suggestion of friendship and support, only reinforcing the emptiness left behind.

I reach up to touch my cheek, sure that I should feel a burning sensation from where your words slapped me.

"They gave me this cancer to make you believe."

I tried to say something, to shrug it off, to reconcile our differences with a glib comment. For once my tongue could not be persuaded to drip sarcasm. I just stared blankly down at you and wondered when you lost your faith in me.

Watching your receding back was like having icicles invade me, piercing my heart and lungs, driving the breath from my body. It was almost a physical pain. We've fought before and scars were inevitable but this time the wounds will not heal; this pain is much deeper. There is too much that time cannot erase, too much to be swept up and locked away in the box where I hide my blackest moments. Betrayal of a trust that was rarely given, of an unspoken love that could not be revealed.

I thought we had a bond deeper than any superficial definition. A connection created from adversity, from sharing each other's pain and joy. When you cried I would wipe away all your tears; when you screamed I was there to keep you from spiraling into the abyss. I've held your hand through all of these years, grasping something I believed in more than myself. You had all of me. You still do.

You captivated me with your resonating light but now I'm bound by the life you left behind. Our life together has splintered and shattered, leaving fragments of memories that refuse to let me go. Your sickness has seeped into me, infecting me with such despair that living is a chore I no longer care to perform. I'm haunted by the severed connection that is still inside of me, keeping a part of you with me wherever I am. Torn from sleep by your face in my dreams I hear your voice as it chases away my sanity, "They gave me this cancer to make you believe."

I should have expected this. You have been growing distant over the last few months, denial and biting anger pouring from your once honeyed lips to sting me with their bitterness. Once unspoken communication is now fractured and unclear, replaced with suspicion and mistrust. My stubborn blindness has made me push back, refusing to see the obvious, my mind insisting that it would come right with time. After all that we had experienced, all the truths we have seen and the blood we have spilled in the name of it, I could not see the truth right in front of me.

You are gone. Not in the physical sense, but in the sense that the indefinable union that has kept us together for so long has eroded. Only a few threads of it remain, buried deep inside me where I will always keep a part of you; to cherish what I once had and lost. Lost by my own refusal to understand that if you hold onto something too hard, you crush it with your love.

That same stubborn streak is telling me that I don't need you, that you never truly believed in the work. That your analytical science was nothing but thinly veiled contempt for anything as wondrous as paranormal circumstances. That any sense of connection was just imagined, daydreams that only served to keep the nightmares temporarily away. I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone and though you're still with me, I've been alone all along.

Then why does my heart constrict every time I think of the look on your face when you accused me? Why should it matter?

Sitting on a couch as battered as my soul, I stare at the smooth surface of my weapon, its reflective surface jittering in the glow of the television. No, time will never erase this feeling; the pain is too real.

Perhaps everlasting solitude is the only way to appease my demons, real and imagined. If my death will bring you life, it is a small price to pay. It will break whatever remaining nexus we share; you will be free and I will at last be truly alone.

The gun is at my temple now, its cold metal sending shivers across my flesh. My finger tightens on the trigger, moving me closer to fate. Tears run down my face to drip from my chin and I watch as one falls to the coffee table below. It spatters on the dark wood, staining the grain almost black. In that moment I hear your velvety tones softly whispering words of comfort, asking me to believe in something stronger than time.

To believe in us.

My fingers tremble and my grip relaxes, my hand drops to my side as another droplet falls to the wooden surface. I'm not ready to give up yet. What there once was, there can still be again. I have the threads of the bond we had and I will slowly weave it into something more powerful than the ravages of time, something unbreakable. All I need is a chance.

I may be alone, but I am never without you.

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End


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